A consortium of 12 European businesses outlined an ambitious plan Monday to build a massive solar power facility in North Africa that they said could satisfy 15 percent of Europe's energy needs by 2050.

Opposition calls for a voter boycott in the Republic of Congo's presidential election appeared to be cutting into the turnout Sunday, but it was unclear how this would affect longtime President Denis Sassou-Nguesso's bid for another term.

CIA Director Leon Panetta has terminated a "very serious" covert program the spy agency kept secret from Congress for eight years, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, said Friday.

New York Gov. David Paterson shocked Albany and risked a constitutional fight Wednesday by picking a crisis manager with Democratic credentials dating to the 1960s to fill the vacant lieutenant governor's post and end a monthlong state Senate standoff.

From the rampart of a whitewashed fort once used to ship countless slaves from Africa to the Americas, Cheryl Hardin gazed through watery eyes at the route forcibly taken across the sea by her ancestors centuries before.